Abstract
The importance of the nurse manager for both quality patient care and organizational effectiveness seems indisputable. With decentralized decision-making, the role of the nurse manager has expanded in both scope and accountability.
In this two-part article, role implementation of the nurse manager and associated learning needs are described. This article focuses on interpreting significant incidents related to role implementation in nurse manager's practice. It also shows how the authors used the Manager as Developer Model for organizing and understanding some of the data. Part 2 (April 1997) will describe and interpret significant incidents related to nurse managers' ongoing learning needs.